Looks like a smashing success! I recognize the Costco cake. Let me tell you about our experience with Costco cakes and why they’re now the only cakes I am allowed to buy. Friends threw me a baby shower at work. I told them I like grocery store cakes. Nothing fancy. Charlotte’s mom was in charge of the cake. Smartly, she got a Costco cake — conceptually the same as a grocery store cake, but way bigger and cheaper. Cake was delicious. DELICIOUS. I brought the leftovers home and my dad had some. He declared it mucho delicioso as well and requested that I get the exact same cake (minus the “Congratulations Jennifer!”) for his birthday a few weeks later. It has been the cake of choice at every family event for the last 15 months. We get white cake with strawberry filling. SO GOOD. Interestingly, the Sam’s cakes are not nearly as good, in my opinion.

People just want to bring presents; I learned this the hard way. Here’s something we did when my sons were too little to think up a birthday list: we asked people to bring a few boxes or cans of nonperishable food and we would take it to the Houston Food Bank. Most of them wrapped it up just like a gift. The few who insisted on bringing gifts did not stand out. This worked until about age 5.